Friday, October 12, 2012

True Spiritual Grit

“The will of God will never take you to where
the grace of God will not protect you. To gain that which is worth having, it
may be necessary to lose everything else.”

~Bernadette Devlin

I am sensitive about writing too
much on this topic. But it can seem that everyone who believes in God needs
daily or at least periodic encouragement for enduring this life. And sometimes
it can appear that the strongest looking individuals are actually floundering.
It is far too easy to become isolated in copious and prevalent spiritual
warfare. And when we live truthfully, refusing to be anaesthetised by the many
comforts of worldly life, spiritual warfare has even a more diabolical effect.

In the tradition of the great
Westerns, then, comes the idea of true spiritual grit.

And to coin a phrase out of the
movie True Grit (2010), “There is nothing free except the grace of
God.” And this is the golden clue
regarding the resource of a grace-fed resilience in and through true spiritual grit.

Don’t Expect Anything Improbable

God can manage the impossible and
certainly from our viewpoint grace can seem to have been an impossible
prospect, pre-Jesus. Our Saviour changed everything!

With God all things are possible.
But we tend to be fooled into believing in the improbable.

The trouble seems to be that we
have faith in many things besides God these days. This is a practical concern
for just about everyone. Our minds are lulled into many imaginings surrounding
our desires, and we only realise we have been deceived when it’s sometimes too
late.

It pays not to expect anything
improbable. Yet, it is the impossible that is easy for God; if it is God’s
will.

Grace, the once-impossible, is the
great exception. Grace is the great surprise. It is the great hope. And this
grace that defines our salvation, and reclassifies our lives as thoroughly renewed,
is worth everything.

We realise this when all is taken
away. Grace is the great compensation.

Grace is Everything – Particularly When
We Have Nothing

When we are required to show true
spiritual grit, when our hope has nosedived, and life has reached a deathly
dearth, grace is what makes our lives flourish.

When the heart is ripped out of
the man or woman in Job-like fashion, yet they cling to the Lord, stoically
resisting the wiles of the enemy, by faithfully continuing to surrender their
will to the Divine will, their true spiritual grit shines like a beacon for all
to see.

Grace is everything, and never
more when we have nothing. With grace we have hope that God can make the impossible,
possible. For faith in the impossible we employ true spiritual grit.